Scarlett Johansson kicks ass in Luc Besson's 'Lucy'

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Liz Braun, QMI Agency

When filmmaker Luc Besson puts a gun in a girl's hand, you should pay attention.

The director of La Femme Nikita and The Fifth Element would like you to meet Lucy, an ordinary woman who gains extraordinary powers.

The film is based on nonsense and spins out of control in its third act, but it's a hugely entertaining — albeit violent — tale of underdog revenge.

And human intellectual potential. Of course.

Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is an American woman who gets involved with the wrong people in Taiwan. She is forced to become a drug mule.

Lucy is inadvertently exposed to the drug she's carrying, a synthetic version of a natural substance required for natal development. The drug unlocks Lucy's cerebral capacity, and she becomes an intellectual giant. She can learn a language in an hour, move objects with her mind and carefully control her environment.

Advanced brain power leads to fantastic physical capabilities. She can stop an adversary in his tracks with a glance. Lucy can easily crush any man who attempts to hurt or intimidate her.

This is bad news for the drug-dealing villains.

To better understand what is happening to her, Lucy tracks down Dr. Norman (Morgan Freeman), the world's leading researcher in cerebral potential. (The story is based on a false notion — that humans only use a small portion of their brain power — and pretends to anticipate what would happen if a person could access 100% brain power. Hint: Way more than a TED Talk.)

Regardless of the fact fakery, it's a trip to watch Lucy speed toward some kind of intellectual infinity. Forget all those villains and all that chaos and bloodshed. Lucy's job now is to transmit all her newfound knowledge to other humans as fast as she can.

In between scenes of Lucy disarming or killing villains are snippets of nature information, marvellous recreations of planetary wonders and bits of terrific science fiction. Visually, the movie unfolds like Tree of Life meets Death Wish. Here is the universe from Lucy's enhanced point of view, and it's completely engaging.

Lucy maintains a blistering pace and terrific action. The film includes a poignant moment when our heroine phones her mother to say goodbye. Lucy explains that she can feel everything, including the love her mother gave unconditionally over the years and the thousand times her mother kissed her face.

It's surprisingly moving. At the one hour, 15 minute mark, the movie starts to unravel, around the point where Lucy decides to experience history in reverse. Never mind. Despite this eventual visit to Crazytown, Lucy is hella cool to look at and remains one of the few good surprises of the summer thus far.

It should be said that Johansson is the movie; it's difficult to imagine anyone else in the role and it seems unlikely the project would have worked without her.